At Last Is All - I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness - Fear is on Our Side - 2006

Well, I've already told this story to basically everyone I know, so that's pretty much the readership of this blog but...I want to write it down, just so I'll have it for posterity.

On Wednesday April 15th, a few events took place. One of them was that Arsenal Football Club played the second leg of their Champions League Quarter Final against Villarreal, the second was that it was Tax Day, the third was that a bunch of short sited morons decided to have a protest of paying taxes to a liberal administration and dubbed their protest with the unfortunate name of "Teabagging" allegedly in honor of the Boston Tea Party.

So, as the game was live at 245 and I had to be at work, I had set my Tivo and divorced myself from the Internet at approximately 244 (I had been screwed by the Internet too many times in attempting to watch non-live games...including one rather unfortunate event with a friend's facebook status post). But before I signed off I remember seeing the coverage of the Teabagging parties on CNN and thinking "My God, CNN has been hacked"...but no, this shit was for real.

Anand and I had planned to meet at a local watering hole called The Patriot. The Patriot is one of those faux country dive bars that exist in NYC, clearly created by people who have never been to a country dive bar but have seen a lot of movies that had them in it. A lot of Toby Keith is played in this bar, the beer is all flat, the place reeks of vomit and the waitresses are uniformly skanky.

So I walk in to meet Anand, and on a Wednesday night the place is absolutely packed. Like I can't even make it to the bar or the bathroom. It's then that I notice that all of the other attendees are wearing the same T-shirt (Except one guy who, I shit you not, was wearing a revolutionary war town crier outfit). The T-shirt says on the front "Obama-Reid-Pelosi" above the presidential seal and "Wrong for America" below it. On the back it says "Liberals are Freaking Faggots".

I quickly realize that this is not a bar I wish to be in and beat a hasty retreat. Running into Anand on the way, we popped into a second bar only to see that that bar is showing a replay of the Arsneal match that is already 15 minutes into the game. I see us scoring our first goal, though I managed to get Anand out of there before he saw it...so at least one of us would be going into the game fresh.

The thing is...I won't go too much into covering the ludicrousness of the Teabaggers agenda (or their name)...it's been covered by funnier people than me. But seriously, it's amazing how quickly they lose their prudery when the shoe is on the other foot. They gladly trash a president they don't like when they accused us of being traitors for questioning the one that my side didn't like. They call us "Faggots" (yet still down grade the F-word to "freaking"???) all to protest what? Not the loss of human life, not the allowing of robber barons to run roughshod over our economy, nor a government that simply sat back and watched our country fall apart...they are pissed that the government is actually trying to DO SOMETHING. They want inaction at a time when our country is falling apart and it is simply staggering to me.

You lost, wing nuts. Suck it.

Anyway, it seems appropriate to end this with a song by I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness. Fear has always been on their side, and that hasn't changed much. Wouldn't it be nice if we ran our country on hope rather than fear?

According to Plan - I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness - Fear is on Our Side - 2006

Can I talk to you about my hang over? A buddy of mine decided to start getting serious with this girl he's been seeing, so last night was my first introduction to her. To ease the awkwardness of such situations, I decided to keep ordering carafe's of sake. At a table for 5 we went through 8 carafes. Not so bad you say? I followed it up with two martinis and two beers at my local bar.

Needless to say, I did not wake up happy...then, because God loves to taunt me, I got put on one of those subway cars that was covered in Jameson's ads. And then when I transfered to the 1 train, my car had the Jamie ads on one side and Stoli ads on the other. I spent the entire ride groaning and praying for death.

And speaking of praying for death...who does sinister titles better than these guys? Look at that band name! Look at the song title!! Wait, no, look at that album title!!! But seriously, this is a great song. Who the hell new five dudes from Austin could produce such beautifully foreboding atmospheric music?